Testing Speed-reading Testing Reading Comprehension

reading can be attained. Fingers cannot move as fast as the eyes can see. And then, there is a vocalization due to slow reading habit. Vocalization is the activity people do while reading; they used to move their lips or even murmuring while reading silently. Vocalization reduces the speed or reader because this attitude could hinder the growth of adequate speed in reading. The sixth problem of reading habit is sub-vocalizing. It is characterized by a reader’s forming the words in his or her larynx. This attitude appears as if the readers are saying each word to themselves as if they pronouncing each word and listening to themselves. In order to avoid pronouncing internally the words you read, practice reading rapidly under timed conditions, or talk about the material to yourself. The seventh problem is lack of stamina. There are people who do not like reading and some of them have no stamina to read, because they thing reading is a tiring and stressful activity for them. The net problem appeared in reading speed and commonly become the biggest problem in it is the lack of motivation and reading interest. Lack of motivation in reading activity causes someone a slow reader. The person who is not motivated to do a certain reading becomes responsible for hindering his or her own reading speed. The most important factor affected reading speed is motivation to read, due to the lack of motivation and interest in reading it can slow down their reading. Finally the last problem in reading habit is some others miscellaneous barriers. The others barriers in affecting reading speed are word blocking, word analysis, monotonous plodding, back tracking, re-reading, readability, mood and purposes and the lack of concentration.

3. Techniques of Reading Speed

As discussed before, reading speed is not only reading rapidly, it is kind or reading skill about how to manage the information, and as many other skill it skill must be practiced regularly. In the effort of managing the information, people usually use some techniques in it. There are lots of techniques that could be learned to help us reading faster. According to Nuttal, there are three techniques of reading speed that especially well, those are as follows: a. Preview; preview technique usually used to get the general idea of a heavy reading. b. Skimming and Scanning; Skimming refers to reading quickly to gain a general idea and not the specific information. While scanning is usually used to search some specific information, and skip other information. c. Clustering; Clustering is a technique of reading speed that train to look at groups of words instead of one at a time to increase reading speed. 49 According to the explanation above, the writer concludes that there are lots of various techniques in order to improve someone’s ability in reading speed and those techniques used depends on the purpose of reading itself. If someone wanted to get the general information from the heavy reading text, he or she can use previous technique. Moreover, if the reader wanted to get the main idea of a text, he or she can use skimming technique, while scanning used if the reader has a limited time and only search for the detail information of the text. In another way, reader can also used clustering technique in order to increase their reading speed, but mostly clustering used for someone who already has a better comprehension and reading vocabulary, because this technique need a higher concentration and train the reader to read a text in the whole group of words. 49 Nuttal, op. cit., p.93.